Harry Connick Jr. goes deep with new album

By Melissa Ruggieri
Cox Newspapers

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ATLANTA – In the four years since Harry Connick Jr. last released a studio album, he’s starred in a heartwarming family film (“Dolphin Tale”), returned to Broadway (in a revival of “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever”), played a prosecutor on a four-episode arc of one of TV’s most popular dramas (“Law & Order: SVU”) and displayed welcome candidness as a mentor on the recent season of “American Idol.”

And you thought you had a busy life.

Last month, Connick released “Every Man Should Know,” an album of all original music that is unequivocally his most personal – at least since 1994’s New Orleans-funk experiment, “She.”

The ever-suave Connick, 45, recently embarked on a tour to support the new release. Connick talked last week about the new show (it will probably feature five or six new songs), the personal nature of the CD (he’s worked on it for two years) and his happy marriage.

Q. How is the tour going?

A. It’s going really well, but it’s extremely challenging because I’m the guy who shows the orchestra how to play the songs, so it takes a lot of time, and I’ve got a lot of lyrics to remember. I’m always tweaking. The shows are never the same.

Q. Because you’re such a true musician, do you think you could deal with judging or coaching on “American Idol” and working with kids who don’t even understand what they’re singing sometimes and not make yourself crazy?

A. I don’t know if I’ll have that opportunity since no one has ever asked me. But growing up in New Orleans, we played all kinds of music, and all of those genres are different for reasons, and with some music, the lyrics don’t matter. Rick James or K.C. & the Sunshine Band, they weren’t really about lyrics, but the music is great.

Those particular tunes that they were asking me to mentor (on “Idol”) were 100 percent about the song itself, but some things aren’t. I happen to be well aware of that. If you listened to Cole Porter every day for the rest of your life, it would be really boring.

A. Part of it is the road I’ve taken in my personal life, the ways I’ve dealt with events that have happened to me, from watching my dad get older to being married and having kids to my mom dying. These are all things that all of us deal with. But I’ve gotten more comfortable in my own skin. The album isn’t 100 percent autobiographical, but I think it was time to stop making up stories to sing about.

Q. Tell me about “Love Wins,” the song you wrote in memory of Ana Grace (Marquez-Greene), who was killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary shootings. (Ana Grace was the daughter of Jimmy Greene, who played in Connick’s band for years.) That had to be heartbreaking to write.

A. It was awful. Ana Grace used to say ‘love wins.’ When I was at the funeral, the minister said, regardless of what happens here, God loved her enough to want her to be with him. But to write the song, sing it, perform it, was extremely difficult, but very consoling when you think about what the words are saying. That’s all we have, man.

Q. So you’ve done Broadway, films, TV, music. What is left for you to conquer?

A. I haven’t conquered any of them. When I go onstage on Broadway, that’s hard – I want to get better at that. I want to do it more and be better than I was the last time I was on stage. It’s not, ‘I’ve done Broadway – I want to move on.’ Right now, it’s really about being on the road. I’m in this world right now.